Wednesday, January 29, 2014

“But
average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has
stalled.”

Here,
in three short sentences, Obama reveals a lot about our politics. Note the use
of the passive voice: “average wages have barely budged,” and “Inequality has
deepened,” and “Upward mobility has stalled.” Obama makes it sound as if these
were just “facts of life” in, what the NY Times calls, “the modern economy.”
[And note should taken as well of the Times’ language, to wit: “he positioned
himself as a champion of those left
behind in the modern economy,” by which the Times means “left behind by the modern economy.”]

But
if these phenomena, wages, inequality, and upward mobility are facts of life,
they are political facts of life.
That is, they are the results of political choices that have been made in the
past and that will be made in the future. These “things” are not the inevitable
products of our “modern economy,” but are the results of how our government has
structured that economy.

Of
course, by talking in this way, Obama does not need to offer a critique of
those political choices that have led to these phenomena. And, in another facet
of his slight of hand, by not making such a critique, Obama has paved the way
for the Republicans and others to prevail, by and large, in their arguments
that attempts to remedy these phenomena must not interfere with what are taken
to be the economic facts of life. In
other words, Obama has set the stage for the continuation of the status quo.

And
while I am pointing out the parameters of Obama’s speech, take note too that
his announcement that he is going to employ “the defiant “with or without
Congress” approach” takes attention away from what he is proposing and puts it
on how he is proposing to do it. Even the Times picked up on this: “But the
defiant “with or without Congress” approach was more assertive than any of the
individual policies he advanced.” Although I would argue that, taken in its
context, this approach is not “assertive” at all. It is just another
illustration of the president’s passivity in light of stymied wages,
unacceptable inequality, and stalled upward mobility.

And
so we continue on the path we have been on for a long time, perhaps best
encapsulated by Bill Clinton’s mantra during the 1992 presidential campaign,
“It’s the economy, stupid.” As I characterized this in my book, Governing America, the expression should
be, “It’s the economy that makes us stupid.” And I can now add, “It’s the
economy that makes us passive aggressive.” And this is not good.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Here are
some passages from Howard Zinn, precisely The
Zinn Reader. This guy knew what was going on although he still hoped for a
national democracy of some equality. And this even though he saw through, for
the most part, the limited character of political change at the national level,
e.g., in his piece “The Limits of the New Deal.” The following is from a piece
entitled “The Bombing of Royan,” a small town in France that was bombed twice, and
in all likelihood unnecessarily, toward the end of World War II. Zinn himself
took part in this bombing.

“One can
see in the destruction of Royan that infinite chain causes, that infinite
dispersion of responsibility, which can give infinite work to historical
scholarship and sociological speculation, and bring an infinitely pleasurable
paralysis of the will. What a complex of motives! In the Supreme Allied
Command, the simple momentum of the war, the pull of prior commitments and
preparations, the need to fill out the circle, to pile up victories as high as
possible. At the local military level, the ambitions, petty and large, the tug
of glory, the ardent need to participate in a grand communal effort by soldiers
of all ranks. On the part of the American Air Force, the urge to try out a
newly developed weapon. (Paul Metadier wrote: ‘In effect, the operation was
above all characterized by the dropping of new incendiary bombs which the Air
Force had just been supplied with. According to the famous formulation of one
general: “They were marvelous.”) [This weapon is now called “napalm.”] And
among all participants, high and low, French and American, the most powerful
motive of all: The habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures,
not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has not been
assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a
will to intercede. . . .

“More and
more in our time, the mass production of mass evil requires an enormously
complicated division of labor. No one is positively responsible for the horror
that ensues. . . .” [Pp. 279-280]

And that
want or obfuscation of responsibility is precisely what “government” is all
about. It is also part and parcel of what Alexander Hamilton – and others - called
“energetic government,” because when responsibility cannot be assigned, then
those with the power to act are free to do so as they see fit. The “enormously
complicated division of labor” Zinn sees is not accidental, not the result of
some “historical process.” It is deliberate, it is chosen, and it is so
precisely because it protects those who find it “necessary” to do horrible
things and, as all “realists” contend, it is always necessary to do horrible
things.

This won’t
take up much space. The headlines in the NY Times today is: “Obama Pursuing a
Modest Agenda in State of the Union.” And here is one paragraph in that story:

“After five years in office, Mr. Obama
has, by his own account, come to feel acutely the limits on his power and the
shrinking horizons before him — all of which make his nationally televised
speech to Congress on Tuesday a critical opportunity to drive an agenda that
may yet shape his legacy.”

Ah
yes, the “modest agenda” in pursuit of “his legacy.” Well, as near as I can
tell Obama’s agenda has been and will remain preserving the status quo as
nearly as he can. And this is not because of “the limits on his power and the
shrinking horizons before him.” [But how do horizons “shrink?” Just wondering.]
No, it is because this is what he chooses to do and has been doing since he was
elected in 2008. Of course, he pretends otherwise, playing the “oh, we
politicians are so powerless, what else could we do” card!

Except
at the margins, it is almost impossible to distinguish the Obama presidency
from the Bush II presidency. We still torture or facilitate torture; we still
are at war in Afghanistan, the allegedly “good war” started by Shrub; we still
are bailing out Wall Street and almost no one has gone to jail or prison for
the recent “recession.” I am sure you can think of other ways in which the
Obama presidency has done little more than continue the Shrub presidency.

And
why does this seem like a weird assessment? To me, it is pretty simple: We are
taught, in a host of ways, that politics is about change, about “reform.” But
in fact, most of our politics is about maintaining the status quo and this
rather simple, and all too common political phenomenon – those who have power
and status want to keep it – is overlooked for the most part by our
commentators and is disguised by our political class, as if there were a big
difference between most of the commentators and our political class.

And
so we go on thinking, reading, and saying that Obama, for example, has an
“agenda” for change that will make his “legacy” as a “great president.” In
point of fact, however, he is just another ambitious politician, the kind of
politician that the founders thought would populate their new, “large,
commercial republic” to a good end. Well, as one of my colleagues said a long
time ago about a my characterization of him as “fucking nuts:” “Well, Peter,
you got it half right!” We are inundated with the ambitious but the results?
Not so good.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

CK:“I don't know if this is really a giant red
flag or not--and maybe it's because I like Anarchy Radio and John Zerzan, but I
think this is a coherent assessment of how we all feel the pain of
civilization. My hope is that we might find those in (understandable)
psychological pain and give them a chance to grasp at the fading comforts of
authentic personal interaction, love, compassion and hope.

Me: “Ok.....perhaps.
"Red flags" always look brighter in hindsight. My fear with stuff
like this is that some bureaucrat somewhere will seize on this as a license to
label behavior or speech dangerous and, hence, suppressible for safety's sake.
You know, like the little kid who was "dealt with" because he made a
piece of paper look like a gun and pointed it at others. And these same
bureaucrats will come up with bs like "binge drinking" and use such
idiocy as their license to limit our freedom even further. "Authentic
personal interaction" or what once was called simply "caring" or
"friendship",,,,,in this world controlled by "the iron cage of
rationality?" Not likely, I think. But I am with your sentiments.”

CK: “Yah, I was just sitting at a diner
counter reading Francis Bacon's "On Friendship" and boy did it read
like a reflection upon a dying art in an age where chums text each other ideas
knowing full well they are intercepted by the computer of some young
statistician that graduated toward the top of his class and earned a not so
well over sighted government position.....I was moved particularly by his critique
of the chimps lifestyle and subsequent negative impact upon his quality of
life, how he called out those who say that humans forced to live within the
confines of ciivil society simply defer to something innate that allows them to
resign to working jobs and paying bills and other examples of quotidian
ratracery because he feels that we have to lose something, not to be social but
to be okay with this artificiality.....and how he points out that we all cling
on to surrogate behavior to calm the existential pangs of post-modernity. So,
aside from the loony pictures you see of him, maybe he wasnt so loony crazy and
his problem was one of degree and of nihilism (surely built upon a foundation
of various imbalances) and of access to firearms given his mental condition.
There's plenty of uncomfortable symbolism in his infamous action, but it stems
from a sobering perspective and from, again, a lack of friendship or anyone to
intercede.”

Me:“Of course, Chris, it would be too much to go too far in this direction,
but I remember my younger brother, Mike, a psychologist until his death in
2007, saying in regard to the young men who killed at Columbine that they, the
shooters, knew they were going to die that day and wondering how those so young
could arrive at that "destination" and accept it, perhaps even
welcome it. When he said that, it struck me, as your words above strike me too,
that something is wrong here, really, really wrong and it isn't just individual
lunacy or "madness." I say, often, to myself: "Something is
missing here, something 'big' and 'important.'" The picture, even the one
above, we have been given of those like Adam Lanza is incomplete, something is
missing, something "big" and "important" is missing. And we
reach out, trying to touch those who need touching. As Mike use to say:
"We all want to be loved." Ain't it the truth?”

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

On Sunday
last, I went to Barnes and Noble to avoid watching yet another football game,
this one between the 49ers and the Panthers. While there, I enjoyed a cup of
coffee and started reading a book, The
Burglary, which is about 7 or 8 people who burglarized an FBI office in
Media, Pennsylvania in, I believe, 1971.

It made for
interesting reading and took willpower not to buy it. I will read it later when
it comes to a library somewhere in my vicinity. One thing that made it
interesting was its account of the history of those times when the country was
being torn apart by an imperialistic war in Vietnam. This war led to protests
and these protests led to beatings and shootings, some fatal shootings, by
those who supported that war against those who did not. Some items in this
history were new to me, such as the fact that President Nixon welcomed to the
White House some “hard hats” who beat war protesters in New York City with
blunt objects wrapped in American flags! [Were they, the hard hats, part of the
“silent majority?”] I did remember that Nixon essentially pardoned Lt. Calley
who had been convicted of participating in the killing of hundreds of old men,
women, young girls, and children, including babies, in My Lai, in Vietnam. What
a time that was.

But one
aspect struck me as interesting, viz., that allegedly the FBI could never catch
these burglars and, allegedly, only now has their identity been confirmed by
themselves. This is especially interesting because the FBI clearly identified
the leader of this group, a professor from Haverford College, as a suspect and,
apparently, did not go after him for some complicated “due process” concerns. This
conclusion struck and strikes me as implausible, to say the least, and here is
my speculation as to what was really going on.

The FBI
knew who had committed the burglary but decided not to arrest and prosecute
them. Why? Well, because these people were what might be called “ordinary
people,” law-abiding people generally speaking, people with families, people of
principle. If these people were arrested and charged, it would only serve to
highlight how unpopular the Vietnam War was and it would be hard to, and
imprudent to try to demonize these people. Besides, by not solving the case,
Hoover and the FBI could go on pretending that opposition to the war was fed by
“subversive” types, you know, communists or socialists or stooges of this or
that foreign country. And, by not solving the case, the FBI could pretend that
those opposed to the war were dangerous precisely because they could not be
caught, being the “sly bastards” that a lot of people assumed they were. Hence,
it served the FBI’s interests to leave the case unsolved, at least in the
public’s eyes.

This conclusion
is lent some more weight when it is remembered, as the book reminds us, of how
the FBI dealt with those who committed criminal acts and waited to be arrested,
such as members of the Catholic peace movement like the Berrigan brothers and
their cohorts. The identity of these “criminals” could not be hidden and,
hence, they had to be maligned and libeled, made to appear as dangerous
anarchists and subversives serving foreign powers, if only the Pope and the
Vatican. Of course, this is, as the FBI knew, a dangerous game and far more
dangerous when dealing with “ordinary people,” and not with robed clerics who
owe allegiance to a “foreign” potentate! A college professor from Haverford
College does not have the “cache” as “Papists!” At least, this was the case
until recently and the popularity of a rather terrible TV show, “The Calling,”
starring Kevin Bacon.

The FBI,
like JFK, LBJ, and RMN, knew that it takes a lot of work to promote wars that
seem suspect to “ordinary people.” And that bureau was not about to shirk its
responsibly of allowing “the movement” to impose its will on the United States’
government. Now, that would be unconscionable, to say the least. And so, the
burglars of Media, Pa. were allowed to slip into “the night,” where the FBI
could make of them what it wished.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

“Critics complain
that Mr. Obama squandered the military success achieved by President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop
“surge” and should have done more to persuade Baghdad to accept a residual
American force beyond 2011. They say he should have been more active in
restraining Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki,
whose Shiite leadership has alienated many Sunnis, fueling the latest
uprising.”

Where to begin? Anywhere, actually.
First: This implies that Obama’s Iraq policies are different than those of
George Bush II. Really? “The military success achieved by….Bush” was that Bush
got to leave the presidency with the appearance of success. In this sense, and
in this sense only, did “the surge work.” And it was Bush who, because of the
alleged “success” of the surge, claimed that it would be possible to do what
Obama did, pull out of Iraq.

Second: This continues the fantasy
that the presence of American power is the key to peace around the world. Why a
fantasy? Well, just to name a few examples: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba,
Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Afghanistan. All of these are places where the
“presence” of American power did little or nothing to promote peace. In places
like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan especially, American power was the cause of
war and created, facilitated, and extended wars there. People forget too easily
that more American soldiers were killed and injured in Vietnam after Nixon was elected president than
before with his “secret peace plan.” And, of course, the war in Afghanistan has
been going on for at least 13 years since the United States has been “involved”
there. And now we see that Iraq is quite similar. The war, started by Bush II,
as it bears repeating, is on going. It is a fantasy for us to think that “the
projection of American power,” as some like to say, leads to peace – or is
intended to.

Third: What is currently happening
in Iraq is, I submit, precisely what Bush II and the Obama administration want
to happen: Chaos in the Middle East. It seems to me pretty obvious that this
has been the goal of American foreign policy over the past few presidencies, a
policy that is meant to serve the interests not only of the United States but
also those of Israel and Saudi Arabia. The most obvious action supporting my
contention is how the Bush II administration “dealt with” Iraq once the
invasion was over. And it is impossible to buy explanations like, “Oh, the Bush
administration forgot to plan for the occupation.”

Does
this policy mean that there might be “blowback,” say in the form of “terrorism”
even here in the United States? Of course, but then such “blowback” is merely
“collateral damage” for those holding the reins of power in Washington. Such
damage is part of a realist’s modus operandi. And what the Bush administrations
and the Obama administration have in common, in addition to other things, is an
embrace of “realism” as the basis of American foreign policy. “Unconscionable,”
you say? Yes, of course. But again that is the essence of “realism.”

So,
here is my guess: The killing, the war will go on in Iraq, while Republicans
and Democrats squabble here, making it seem that this is, from their
perspectives, an undesirable state of affairs. But it is not. In fact, it is
exactly the state of affairs they both embrace. And, so, whichever party holds
the presidency, war in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, and maybe elsewhere
as well, will go on and on and on, as George Orwell saw so long ago when he
wrote 1984. And like Winston in 1984, we will be expected to accept
these wars as necessary and even as justified. We seem to be pretty much there
already, as the Times article illustrates.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

In
an article in the NY Times today, an account is given of a memoir by Robert
Gates which is, allegedly, critical of President Obama, at least with regard to
Afghanistan. Here is a quote from the article, the link to which is provided
below:

“As I sat there, I thought: The
president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in
his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr. Gates wrote. “For
him, it’s all about getting out.”

Gee,
I guess for Mr. Gates this, “losing faith,” qualifies as criticism, while for
me it qualifies as thoughtfulness, unaccompanied by a will to follow one’s
instincts. Trust Petraeus? Is that what Petraeus’ wife did? Trust him? Oops! Do
business with Karzai? You mean, the guy whose brother was as corrupt as they
come and who was himself seen as a “lightweight” in the arena of Afghan
politics? And what is wrong with “getting out?” As if, “getting in” did the
United States much good. Oh yeah, that’s right: By getting in we disabled bin
Laden, didn’t we? Well, not so much, it would seem. And our “strategy” there.
What did that amount to? It is debatable whether “counterinsurgency” has ever
“worked” anywhere. But, of course, that is not the American way.

You know, it is
almost always the case that Americans like to think that the reason they have
failed, e.g., in Vietnam, in Korea, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, is because they
did not employ the “right strategy.” “Oh, if only we had employed the right
strategy, all would have been well.” We Americans never fail because we have
chosen to fight wars that we could not win; no, we just make “mistakes.” Or,
our strategies are never wrong; they are just improperly implemented. “Oh, if
only JFK had lived. Even if he didn’t pull out of Nam, he would have ‘won’ that
war! After all, he was young, he was handsome, and he had a Harvard education.
How could he fail?”

When
we will learn that the world is not “manageable,” that power does not guarantee
success, that all the technological “break throughs” do not and cannot guarantee
success? When? I doubt ever. And so it is little wonder to me that Obama
probably thought of his instincts the way Gates thinks of them: Not to be
trusted and certainly not to be acted upon. Too bad. He might have meant
something if he had trusted his instincts more than his reason.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Here is a headline in the NY Times, as displayed on its main web
page: “Absent U.S., Power Vacuum in the Middle East Lifts Militants.” You will
find the link below.

To me, this is just astounding.
After all, it was the exercise of U.S. power in the Middle East, especially in
the form of Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq that has led to rise of
militancy in the Middle East! And this is to say nothing at all about how U.S.
support for Israel might also contribute to the strength of the militants in
the Middle East.

Oh yes, and by the way, what do you
call a nation which claims as its right to preemptively
strike, that is, wage war on those who it perceives to be its enemies? I suggest that the word “militant”
could be accurately used to describe such a nation. So why is it that the Times feels free to label some in the
Middle East “militants,” but chooses not to do so with regard to the United
States? Y’all know the answer to that question, of course.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Immediately
below is a link to an article in today’s NY Times reminiscing about how
wonderful it was when Reagan was president and he and the Congress “made
government work,” as the saying is these days. And then following that is an
excerpt from Walter Karp’s Liberty Under
Siege, providing a different description and evaluation of Reagan and how
government “worked” when he president. When the oligarchs get together, it is
amazing just how well the government “works.” Of course, the question is:
“Works” for whom? Which is always the question.

“A tremor
of fear ripples through Republican ranks [1980] – with reason most compelling.
Inside the supply-side quackery and immense and dangerous force lies latent,
coiled up within it like a boa constrictor. Once the Federal Reserve succeeds
in disinflating the economy, the one certain result of Reagan’s huge promised
tax cut is huge annual budget deficits – more than $100 billion a year; $150
billion, perhaps, counting the military buildup. So calculates Reagan’s future
budget director, David Stockman, age thirty four, a former protégé of Senator
Moynihan’s. No mace in Stockman’s eyes are these huge crushing deficits, but an
‘opportunity,’ he calls it, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for ‘a formal assault
on the welfare state.’ Given the ‘battering ram’ force to those deficits, a
titanic reversal of history lies within the power of the Right: ‘Forty years of
promises, subventions, entitlements and safety nets issued by the federal
government to every component and stratum of American society would have to be
scrapped or drastically modified,’ so Stockman recalls himself thinking in
those heady autumn days of 1980. The ‘craven politicians’ would have no choice:
dismantle the enterprises of government, liberate and exalt the power of
capital – trampled and brought low for so many years – ‘or risk national ruin’
from the crush of those deficits.

“Therein
lies the true beauty of the scheme: no choice. No need to persuade a feckless
electorate that mitigating gross inequality is an enterprise unworthy of a
republican commonwealth. No need to persuade them that a house of one’s own,
yeomanly independence, security in old age, clear air and clean water, the
principles of liberty and equality perpetually upheld (however ill served), a
public realm shielded from hungry mobs and criminal despair (for misery is the
enemy of liberty) are impermissible public goals – ‘bloated, wasteful and
unjust spending enterprises,’ so the future budget director calls them. No need
to undertake the hopeless task of teaching the national mob the sublime, icy
truths of laissez-faire capitalism; no need to persuade them – for it is
equally hopeless – that no purpose beyond ‘economic efficiency’ is fit and
proper for a capitalist country, for America as ‘just one big business,’ for
America the ‘industrial giant,’ as the President-elect likes to call this
Republic. Are we not something other than that, the feckless rabble would ask?
Have Americans not died on a hundred battlefields for something other than
that? For something more like government of, by and for the people, which is
supposed not to perish from this earth? No need to turn aside such questions.
The American people are drowning in inflation, are clinging to the balanced
budget idea like a shipwrecked sailor clutching at flotsam. Let Congress enact
– but will it? – these huge tax-reduction deficits and then let Reagan demand
they be wiped away and there is no need to persuade a free people to abandon
their feckless public goals. Under the crushing weight of ‘fiscal necessity’ –
a false necessity, necessity brutally, deceitfully contrived – the judgment of
the vicious many shall be subjugated to the will of the righteous few, to us,
the Right, keepers of the flame, dwellers in the political wilderness for fifty
years, in the wilderness no longer.

“Such is
the latent power coiled up within supply-side quackery – the power to carry out
a brutal plot, a deceitful scheme, a political crime, a crime against
government by the consent of the governed, a tyrant’s crime against a free
people’s freedom to decide their own fate, a crime by no means deeply
concealed. On October 14, poor, unheeded Carter had presciently warned that his
rival’s program must lead, inevitably, to a $130 billion deficit by 1983, to a
bloated military establishment and a federal government stripped, impoverished
and paralyzed for years to come. Suppose the supply-side plot were launched and
the people rose up against it? What would become of the Reaction then? What
possible hope would there be for Oligarchy restored?” [127-29]

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Nothing the
US does will “save” Iraq, primarily because the purpose of US policy is
decidedly not to save Iraq. And that was not and is not today the purpose of US
policy. Rather, the purpose of Shrub’s invasion and occupation was to undermine
Iraq as a functioning nation, just as it was and is the purpose of US in the
Middle East to create chaos there for as long as is possible and regardless of
the inhumanity of this policy. One should never underestimate, as Machiavelli
reminded us, of the inhumanity of those we label today “realists.” To succeed,
the prince must “learn to be able not to be good.” Link follows.